A special journal issue honors NCSE's Scott

The latest issue of Evolution: Education and Outreach (volume 3, number 2) is in honor of — if a few months in advance of — the sixty-fifth birthday of NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott. Edited by NCSE's deputy director Glenn Branch (who contributed "Three wishes for Genie" by way of introduction), it contains essays by Nicholas J. Matzke, Robert T. Pennock, Barbara Forrest, Raymond Arthur Eve with Susan Carol Losh and Brandon Nzekwe, Lawrence M. Krauss, Robert M. Hazen, Kevin Padian, Jay D. Wexler, Kenneth R. Miller, Brian Alters, and Carl Zimmer. Plus there's a biographical appreciation by Andrew J. Petto, a bibliography compiled by Adam M. Goldstein and Glenn Branch, and a reflection on the importance of "Listening to Teachers" by Scott herself.

Additionally, NCSE's Louise S. Mead and Scott offered a further installment in Overcoming Obstacles to Evolution Education, NCSE's regular feature in Evolution: Education and Outreach. Entitled "Problem Concepts in Evolution Part II: Cause and Chance," their column discusses how the concepts of cause and chance are often confusing to students and suggests "how to address these specific challenges to understanding evolution in light of recent research." And NCSE's Steven Newton reviewed Ralph O'Connor's The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856 (University of Chicago Press, 2007), which, he writes, "presents a wide-ranging view of how geology, in its earliest days, appealed through drama and spectacle to an exclusive portion of the public."

Originally, Evolution: Education and Outreach was freely available on-line. Now, as Niles Eldredge and Gregory Eldredge explain in their editorial, "After a temporary hiatus, ... we are poised to come back free online — the better to serve our educational outreach mission." Past issues will soon begin to appear on-line at the National Institutes of Health's PubMed Central. But there's no need to wait to read the articles by Matzke (PDF), Padian (PDF), and Scott (PDF), which were published through Springer's Open Access program and are already freely available. Moreover, NCSE members will have the opportunity to receive a printed copy of the issue, which will be offered as a gift premium in the fall fundraising letter. And if you're not a member of NCSE, what are you waiting for? Join today.